But if we live in a house with a basement, how can we resist using it? If we have no clear cautions to the contrary, how can we resist using it for storage, recreation, hobbies or relaxing?

Many of the folks who made good use of their basements are regretting that. And many who made good use of their basements but didn’t experience damage from flooding as a result are counting themselves lucky.

Flood damage in southeastern Michigan was a painful reminder that the pipes that carry off our storm water were never intended to carry off the worst that could befall us.

Their lack of capacity reminded us that a lot of basements are in a flood plain, as well as a surprising number of low spots on the surface. All became retention basins and watercourses.

Basement flooding in some communities was more common in the middle of the last century than in years since. In southeastern Oakland County, sewage and storm water have been routed through the same set of pipes for most of a century. The original combined sewers were inadequate to carry off heavy rains. The backups put stinky storm water into many basements.

A set of relief drains completed in the early 1960s eased the problem for most residents.

There were exceptions. One of the heaviest rainfalls recorded in southeastern Michigan, in July, 1967, dropped 5.1 inches in a rain gauge on the roof of the Daily Tribune in just 90 minutes. That intensity, measured in downtown Royal Oak, wasn’t widespread across the region, but a lot of basements flooded nevertheless.

Heavy rains entering those combined sewers washed sewage into the Red Run Drain. A dam intended to reduce such overflows had been improved in the early 1960s, but not by much.

A map showing locations where residents have filed claims with the city shows that many are close to the major relief drains built in that early-60s project.

Environmental agencies in the years since took a dimmer view of sewage into open drains, into the Clinton River and Lake St. Clair than they did of sewage backing up into basements.

So improvements in the early 1970s and again in the early 2000s improved the dams and held back increasing amounts of polluted storm water, but closer to the open streams than the basements.

If torrential rains are to become more commonplace, whether as a result of climate change or some other cause, perhaps we should be looking at ways to drain and retain storm water upstream, closer to the basements. We’ve spent a great deal to retain it downstream, and we still don’t quite have that right. Overflows still occasionally pollute Lake St. Clair.

So what do we do in the meantime?

Our drainage systems aren’t sized for the Ultimate Storm. They’re designed for storms our communities could afford to protect us from – perhaps a 10-year or 20-year storm, back when the characteristics of such a storm were well known.

Do we want to afford more protection? If we can’t afford insurance, can we get reimbursement from communities for storms the drains were never designed to handle? That doesn’t seem right.

We were blindsided by so much flooding.

In the absence of a procession of gullywashers over the years, who could have resisted putting basement space to use? And how many of us really wanted to know the risk that the space would flood?

In the absence of the larger answers, PTSD is a useful thing to have around. At the least, it should remind us that our basements may not be the best places to keep things we care about and things we can’t afford to replace.

Robert Ball is a former reporter, editor and editorial writer for the Journal Register Company/Digital First Media.